All Those Pretty Girls
by eden alice
Summary: A Coronation Street, Eastenders crossover. It's possible that she has actually met someone more tragic than herself. Carla Gorden and Ronnie Mitchelle meet in a bar.


All Those Pretty Girls

The bar is a sweaty cliché and Carla can not help but be slightly concerned about the way her very expensive boots are sticking to the floor. The lights are as low as dusk, the murkiness only broken by laser beam flashes of pink, green and all the sickly sweet colours of the rainbow. Some retro and aged grudge track growled through crackly speakers till it was mostly reduced to a deep thumping baseline. It had a charming quality in the way it would all feel like a delightful acid trip once she was rather pissed.

She held herself tight and unapproachable walking past a few populated tables. The mostly male regulars were either sober enough to note her tightly coiled 'just you fucking try anything' posture or too drunk to even notice her. All in all it was a perfectly dreary place to just drink her way out of her head. After the months of grief and plotting it was exactly what she needed.

The legs of one bar stool suspiciously looked like someone had been trying to make vampire killing stakes out of them so she sat her self down on its neighbour. A snapping demand and a drink was quickly placed in front of her. Jack Daniels. Neat. Liam was the only person who would at least try and keep up with her.

She banished thoughts of _him _before she fell right back into that void of despair. Sometimes she'd find herself with a running monologue running through her head like she could talk to him. That's when she focused on being his avenging angel because she was not the type of person to do that. But the early hours of this morning was simply for mindless drinking and killing brain cells.

Happiness may not be at the bottom of a glass of whiskey but strobe lighting was making it a pretty electric blue and she imagines it the same colour running through her digestive system. There is the sound of a light weight plonking down heavily on the stall next to her, the opposite side to the dangerous looking one, and Carla, pleasantly warm lazily turns her head to examine the newcomer.

The another woman equally was out of place, long legged and blond, dressed in damn tight jeans and bikers leathers. Exotic cheekbones and a sweeping fringe cast shadows across the other woman's face and Carla briefly thinks they must look like opposite bookends, light and dark, tall and short and then that she really needs to be drunker.

The other woman returns her gaze with an unreadable, hard if slightly waxy expression before turning to demand straight vodka. Never Carla's drink of choice but it was almost like having a fellow hard drinking companion as the blond downed the clear liquid with a barely their wince.

"You know between the pair of us we're probably wearing enough designer labels to buy this place." Carla commented with a snort.

"This better not be an 'I'm the pretty queen of the dive bar' fight because I'm really not in the mood." Her voice was higher than Carla's sultry tones but potentially just as whiny (Not that Carla ever admitted to sounding whiny) if it was not full of no nonsense hardness. She had a London accent that didn't sound anywhere ridiculous as the fake ones in films sounded.

"Nah, this place is just a one night stand. I plan to get drunk enough I don't remember how I get home." She was going back to an impersonal hotel room but she did not feel like sharing that.

The blonds lips quirked in an almost smile, "I've lived in a pub long enough to not want to claim any stakes on another one." It was clear she did not usually share personal information but it was as if there was an odd bond between the two self destructive women. Was this girl power?

"So what's your childhood trauma that needs drowning so unimaginatively?" Carla asked once all threat has dissipated. In a flash of light she saw the chlorine blue of the other woman's eyes, it was like looking through a swimming pool and the alcohol had left them unguarded enough for Carla to notice something dark and haunted pass through them.

The blond shifted uncomfortably before taking another drink apparently for courage. She spoke into the wall not turning towards her companion. "My father took away the daughter I had at fourteen and told me she died as a toddler. Then I find out he is a lying bastard minuets before my little girl gets hit by a car and dies in my arms a whole nineteen years old." A pause. "And I left my fiancé over a screaming match."

The look on her face when the woman faces Carla again stops her doubting any of her dramatic stories. There is a deep hidden pain almost surfacing in the hard angles of her face and it is like they are comrades.

"My husband had my love of my life and ex brother-in-law murdered minuets after I lied and ended the affair telling him I'd never loved him." The words flow like honey but they taste bitter as the alcohol on her tongue.

The other woman's laugh verged on hysteria, if felt familiar and Carla wondered when was the last time she had genuinely felt a reason to laugh.

"This is possibly a conspiracy where we are trapped in equally shitty soap operas."

She could not understand how anyone could watch her life without slitting their wrists but otherwise the idea had potential.

"I'm drunk enough for anything to be possible." She did not want to mention that there was never enough drink to make her believe Liam was still alive. "I'm Carla."

"Ronnie," the other woman offered with a tilt of her glass.

"Ronnie?"

"Veronica but no one worthwhile calls me that." The hard tone was creeping back in.

"Well it's depressing to meet you Ronnie." Friendly sarcasm dripped from Carla's drunken slur as they waited for refills.


End file.
